Joy:"I feel a constant low level of stress every day, just by virtue of existing in my environment,"

Fancy Feast:"When she was on a bad date, she would go to the bathroom, hit her nose until she got a nosebleed, and excuse herself, because it was easier to punch herself in the face than suffer the consequences of rejecting a man."

Jason Cochran:"So don’t be impatient about your own life. It takes a lifetime, sometimes, to reach your destiny."

Jason Cochran:"Dreams do come true, and sometimes wilder than anyone could have imagined them, but sometimes they have to lay dormant—or get left behind, or rot, or even be given to someone else—for a long time before they can."

Jason Cochran:"The lesson, of course, is to always be patient. Things will change. Laughingstocks can become icons. Even when things look bleak, or when you can’t envision the path forward, or when your idea appears to be so detested that all hope is gone, you can eventually come through and create something enduring to be proud of. Liberty can take its sweet time.'

David Wong:"As a result, if you are a public person in 2018, you will at some point be used as a punching bag by a bunch of strangers. That's the purpose you'll serve in their life, a thing they can hate without risk, and then forget about. It's part of the tradeoff of being a public person, and oh by the way, in the social media era, everyone is a public person."

Livia:"here's the thing about adulthood: you will go for like three months with nothing happening and you’re bored as hell and then in the span of two weeks eight different things happen at once - some fantastic and some shitty and some just plain bonkers - and you’re just running around like a chicken with your head cut off and no clue what the fuck is going on"

Seanan McGuire:“I went to the Raptor Center and my friend was injured” isn’t funny. “And then Brooke took a FALCON to the FACE” is funny. It’s all a matter of word choice."

Alison Green:"Humans are weird! So weird, in so many different ways. Often that weirdness is hidden and comes out in ways that shock and disappoint you, after the person lulled you into thinking you knew what to expect from them. So it’s lovely when someone wears their weirdness like a peacock’s plumes, right there for all to see from the get-go."

Cecil, Welcome to Night Vale:"The problem wasn’t solved, but most problems don’t get solved. I mean, generally we just do our best to mitigate the problem, and if it can’t be mitigated, then it can be relegated to a background noise by pleasant distractions and a prioritization of interests."

Dan Harmon:"I believe in magic. I believe in mythology. I believe in shamanism. I believe that spells can be cast and I believe that random things coalesce and reveal themselves to be part of a plan we don’t control, you know."

McAlvie"The ultimate downfall of modern civilization won't be war; it'll be Twitter and Facebook."

Jenny Zhang:"A lot of writers swear by routine, but I swear by chaos. There’s enough fucking routine in my life. Every day I have to brush my teeth. Every day I have to smile at strangers. Every day I have to worry about money. Every day I want something I can’t have. Every day I find some way to go on! I know that writing every day for an hour would help me tremendously with writer’s block, but I also know that I need an element of wildness in my writing. I need to know that writing is something I do because it sets me free. It makes me feel golden with confidence. It gives me the gift of gab. I feel like a god. I feel like an entertainer. So write when you damn well please."

Joe Queenan:"If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find "reality" a bit of a disappointment. People in the 19th century fell in love with "Ivanhoe" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" because they loathed the age they were living through. Women in our own era read "Pride and Prejudice" and "Jane Eyre" and even "The Bridges of Madison County"—a dimwit, hayseed reworking of "Madame Bovary"—because they imagine how much happier they would be if their husbands did not spend quite so much time with their drunken, illiterate golf buddies down at Myrtle Beach. A blind bigamist nobleman with a ruined castle and an insane, incinerated first wife beats those losers any day of the week. Blind, two-timing noblemen never wear belted shorts."

LogicalDash:"Nobody of any age should have to fend off sexual partners. That such defense is assumed as a part of the cost of adult courtship is suggestive of some more fundamental problem than age difference and its effect on consensuality."

Keith Richards:"I had to invent the job, you know," he said, earlier. "There wasn't a sign in the shop window, saying, "Wanted: Keith Richards."

Caitlin Moran: "As I started to reassess my writing style, I thought about what I liked doing--what gave me satisfaction--and realized the primary one was just... pointing at things. Pointing out things I liked, and showing them to other people--like a mum shouting, "Look! Moo-cows!" as a train rushes past a farm. I liked pointing at things, and I liked being reasonable and polite about stuff. Or silly. Silly was very, very good. No one ever got hurt by silly.
Best of all was being pointedly silly about serious things: politics, repression, bigotry. Too many commentators are quick to accuse their enemies of being evil. It's far, far more effective to point out that they're acting like idiots, instead. I was up for idiot-revealing.
"I am just going to be polite and silly, and point at cool things," I decided. "When I started writing, I would have killed to have one thing to write about. Now, I have three. Politeness and silliness, and pointing. That's enough."

Carolyn Hax:"Unless 15 years’ worth of mail has misled me, no one has ever found love through complaining about the lack of it, and no lonely person has ever felt better for hearing, “You just haven’t found the right person yet.”

Joe Queenan:"People who read an enormous number of books are basically dissatisfied with the way things are going on this planet. And I think, in a way, people read for the same reason that kids play video games ... they like that world better. It works better, it's more exciting, and it usually has a more satisfactory ending."

Dan Savage:"There isn't someone for everyone. Some of us do wind up alone, and that just fucking sucks and sometimes that stings, and you don't know if you're one of those people who's going to wind up alone until you die alone....So you kind of have to live in hope and build a life for yourself that's rewarding and fun, has friends and pleasure in it, whether you're alone or not."

the painkiller:"I will not be tagged, pinned, circled, liked, tweeted, retweeted or numbered."

Steve Jobs:"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Apple:"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Miss Manners:"Please do not -- repeat, not -- make a hostile approach to knitters. Have you not noticed that they are armed with long, pointy sticks?"

Stephen Tobolowsky:"And of course, nothing is what I figured on in my life. That seems to be a recurring theme."

James Bulls:"When you find yourself walking a true path, you will know it because you will want to walk it no matter the burning Sun, freezing sleet, torrential rain, and treacherous ground. The risks become no less and the journey as always exhausts you, but your desire to brave the challenges never diminishes."

March 28, 2017

"When that 37 percent figure came out, we urged caution, because we are boring scolds. But also because we pointed out that these daily figures (which are actually running three-day averages) were volatile and because of whom Gallup polls. We suggested, instead, that you consider the weekly average from Gallup, which gives a better sense of the long-term trend. And that is actually the new bad news for Trump. Sure, he’s now seen a daily low that suggests he’s pretty unpopular. But last week he hit a new low as well of 39 percent — after all the volatility is smoothed out. That’s lower than Obama ever saw during any single week."

"Harling says he went to a place of “rage and anger,” a state exacerbated by the fact that his sister’s widower remarried shortly after her death. Even more difficult was the fact that his nephew began calling his stepmother “Mama.” Harling was afraid Susan would be forgotten.

SHIRLEY MACLAINE Herbert called and said, “I’m going to send you this script, and you can play any part you want, except for M’Lynn and the daughter.” So I read it and I said, “I want to play the really bitchy one.” I think I was rehearsing for my old age. I was seeing if I could get away with saying what I negatively felt and still be funny. And it’s kind of turned out that way, actually.

She had on that white cashmere sweater with the marabou around the neck, and she was just swinging, cool as a cucumber. Julia said, “Dolly, we’re dying and you never say a word. Why don’t you let loose?” Dolly very serenely smiled and said, “When I was young and had nothing, I wanted to be rich and famous, and now I am. So I’m not going to complain about anything.”

SHIRLEY MACLAINEWe immediately saw that Herbert was cruel to both Dolly and Julia. I don’t know why, except he was basically a choreographer, and choreographers tend to be cruel in the name of art. Julia’s feelings were hurt, and we lived next door to each other, and she was over every night. We talked about life, and I tried to help her because I was a dancer and understood the choreographer mentality. Then one day I basically told him to go f**k himself and everybody heard it and things got better.

But you know, my sister died and I wrote about it and people look at it and think it’s all limos and glamour and sitting next to Princess Di at the royal premiere. My sister had to die for all that to happen. So almost daily I think about what my life would be if she had lived. It can take you to an uncompromisingly dark place sometimes. Then I just have to go back to the honesty of the first impulse, that I just wanted somebody to remember her.

From the author Q&A link:

"Speaking of cake, had you ever seen an armadillo groom’s cake?There was indeed an armadillo groom’s cake at my sister’s wedding. The red velvet part was my writerly creation. The original one was very simple—a sheet cake cut in the shape of an armadillo. Not like the high art form it’s become. I’ve seen some amazing edible armadillos. The New York Times credited me with the rediscovery and revival of red velvet cake. I consider this as one of my great life achievements."